If you’re running the WordPress SHOPP plugin and are getting error messages about JPEG support, you need to read this. If neither of those conditions apply to you, you don’t need to read this, but you can if you want to see how ridiculously smart I can be sometimes.

Seeing the FATAL ERROR message can be terrifying to anyone trying to manage a web-based business without a crew of geeks on hand. Recently, I tried to access my online store (SHOPP plugin through WordPress); I saw this message:

Shopp requires JPEG support in the GD image library. Your web hosting environment does not currently have a version of GD installed that has JPEG support.

While investigating this issue, which neither my host nor Shopp provided information about, I came across a site where someone suggested running a simple phpinfo script to take a look around. Once I did, I noticed something amazingly simple and profoundly damaging: a missing letter.

When I ran the php info script, I noticed that the people at my host had decided to call the support for this image type “JPEG Support”, while the people at Shopp were calling it “JPG Support”. Simply adding that missing “E” to line 349 fixed everything. The line should read like this: